Boscobel Lands Clearcut Devastation - Poems and Picture

It is not clear,can not be clear,in our single-minded minds,what the cut does.

On the surfaceclear sounds betterthan cloudybetter than murkybetter than obstruction“there was somethingin our way”

The man looksout his new windowacross the newness ofthe single-minded lawnsaying“we couldn’t see theridge over there,but now we do”

in a languagethe birds whoflew throughthe dense of the forestdidn’t speak

nor the deerwho could dream at nightbeneath the fullnessof the dreaming trees.

Edith Hope Estate Lands, March 19, 2012

by Roger Davies

In the Civil War photographs of amputations,the arms legs feet handsof soldiers are intertwined haphazard,tossed to the place of useless,to the thick and bloodied stack.Whatever the ways of life they werenow no longer rise. What rises and risesis brute marker to the brutishness of it all.The ghastly mound grows, to bury a better timewhich found measure in the sound of feetat joyful dance, his hand around her waist --a warm time measured by the breezesrising and falling through Hemlocks' noble branches,through the opening needles delicious to the wind.

The Occupiers at the Hope Estate Lands

The Hemlocks were occupiers.They just blew in with the wind.

They set up their canopiesof overhanging branches,fed themselves in a treesort of way, and others toowho came aroundon wing, or four legs.

They didn’t seem to mindstaying out in the wind,or rain, or intense heat of day.They seemed to like it,sprouting a communityout of whatever was around,and endured.

They were active life.You could sit with themand know that.

Their days were numberedby deeds and contractsand laws and lack of laws,and by the people in necktieswho ordered the little yellow bannersof death and destruction.

They weren’t part of the planning processand attended no meetings for communityinput, if there had been any.

The machines moved in, growled,cleared them out, when no one was looking.

Someone came laterand said there would be respectableNew England homes, straight outof the catalogue, the best moneycould buy.

The occupiers were untidyand only had themselves.If their pictures were in a catalogueit was pretend.

The timeline did not tolerate them.

Each one was unique,well rooted. Each onewas born, lived, died.

The planners waitedin their office, waiting to plan.The taxman got fidgety.The capitalist, who only sawaccumulating underbrush,knew what to do.